Ryanair introduces â‚¬2 per passenger fee

Ryanair is introducing a €2 charge per passenger for all bookings made from Monday (April 4) to cover the cost of cancellations and delays "outside of its control".

The airline said the extra revenue will help it cover the extra €100 million costs it has suffered due to 15,000 flight cancellations and the subsequent compensation and legal expenses arising from a series of events.

These include the Icelandic volcano airspace closures, the snow closures of many EU airports last winter and over 15 days of national ATC summer strikes, primarily in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain.

The controversial airline said EU261 regulations, which leave airlines responsible for refunds, meals, hotels and phone calls during such events, was ”unfair and discriminatory”.

It said these expenses “cannot be loaded onto airlines without being passed on to passengers”.

But it promised to reduce or drop the charge if the EU261 regulations are reformed, to include an effective right of recovery clause and a non discriminatory “force majeure” clause.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said: “When the EU261 regulations were first introduced, airlines were assured that they could recover the cost of these cancellations and delays from those parties who caused them.

"However the airlines have no right of recovery from Governments (when they close airspace), ATC unions (when they repeatedly walk off the job), or airports (who can’t even clear snow off their runways).

“It’s a crazy situation that travel insurance companies paid out nothing during the volcanic ash crisis last year (because it was an “Act of God”), yet the airlines were forced to pick up weeks of delays, cancellations, hotel and restaurant costs.

“While we regret the imposition of this €2 EU261 levy, the extraordinary costs which have been imposed on us by delays and cancellations under these discriminatory regulations must be recovered from passengers.”

Your Comments (8)

Stephen McNamar refers to "Travel Insurance Companies paid nothing out during the Volcanic Ash crises, due to so called Act of God'.

I would like to put Mr McNamara straight - Under the regulations introduced by the EU, the Airlines/Tour Operators were made responsible to refund cleints, and therefore insurance companies were not responsible for indemnifying clients. However, as a gesture of goodwill and to assist clients our own insurers did settle a number of claims.

and I'm guessing no other airline has put their prices up to cover this? Yea right! Just not announced it and itemised it would be closer to the truth.
To MOL any publicity is good publicity, but I really cannot see that other airlines haven't incorporated some price hike to cover EU regs.

I had mixed views hearing that Ryanair will add a €2 euro levy to all fares from Monday to cover its costs of compensating passengers under EU regulation 261. It appears the whole industry is uniformly against this regulation, however it comes as no surprise that Ryanair is first to pass this cost on to its customers. You can"t blame any business feeling perplexed about having to compensate where it was clearly not at fault, but I"m curious about the science behind how Ryanair came up with this seemingly arbitrary €2 figure!
Another concern is whether customers will be deterred from buying travel insurance because they think the airline has to pay for delays and cancellations whatever happens. The trouble is that insurance companies can escape paying out on "force majeure" incidents as an "act of god" when the poor airlines are still saddled with these costs. Whatever the reasoning behind the EU regulations, someone has to pay and it looks like that will ultimately be passengers regardless!

So would now be a good time to mention that Irish Ferries have just launched online sales for cheap SailRail tickets from anywhere in Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, you name it) to anywhere in Britain (London, Manchester, Norwich, Brighton, wherever)?
This is a first - Dublin-London 40 euros any day, fixed price even bought on the day of departure. Galway to London 60 euros, Dublin to Edinburgh 40 euros. No baggage fees, no surcharges, no extra cost to get to and from airports.
And it's a nice relaxing scenic journey along the North Wales coast, too...

So the guaranteed no fuel surcharges airline, is adding an additional fee for EU261...
Me thinks a additonal little revenue stream to covering rising fuel costs and help bolster profits.
Why seperate out this cost from fare, all airlines are in the same boat regarding the EU261 compensation???

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